The original meaning of the concept sustainability or sustainable development
might in an altruistic way have referred to building societies based on a sound
environmental practice. This paper shows that the structural adjustments
programs (SAP), Poverty Reduction Strategies and the Millennium Development
goals (MDG’s) compel the Ghanian government to favour economic and fiscal
sustainability. This neo-liberal policy has led to increasing inequalities, widening
regional disparities, migration from rural areas to quickly grown up peri-urban
areas basically within a huge informal sector, and unplanned capital formation
and development at large, making claims to achieve the MDG’s by 2015
illusory. A way forward for Ghana should be to gradually fence off from the
world market and learn from the development efforts of the Kwame Nkrumah
first independent government.
Keywords: environmental sustainability, international financial institutions,
Ghana, Millennium Development goals, water management.
1 Introduction
The original meaning of the concept sustainability or sustainable development
might in an altruistic way have referred to building societies based on a sound
environmental practice. Nowadays the concept has largely been attenuated so it
can be attached to almost everything; environmental sustainability, social
sustainability, economic sustainability, fiscal sustainability, debt sustainability,
sustainable leadership, sustainable trade, sustainable governance etc. This
attenuation has the function to conceal the power relations inherited with the
concept.